Firstly the good news.
If you've read my last blog entry, checked the date, and seen that I've posted again, then I must have survived, as I'm still here to type this stuff...hope someone is still reading!
Secondly the bad news.
While nothing went 'wrong', the cause of my problems was not resolved, which leaves some difficult decisions to make.
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The day started early, with blood taken and a catheter inserted in my arm at around 8:30am. This wasn't without incident. The veins in my right arm (which the nurses used to love) now seem to be knackered as far as needles are concerned. I think I had so many needles during chemo that it's just given up. This, combined with not being allowed to eat prior to the procedure resulted in me virtually fainting, and having to lie down to recover and eventually stop sweating.
After this I was taken to the cardio lab / operating theatre. Wow.
Must have been about 8 or more nurses / doctors / technicians, 6 plasma screens with various read-outs & graphs, including one with my name on :-) Onto the 'table', with x-ray machines above, and masses of other equipment I assumed it would be best not to end up being used on me!
Firstly I was hooked up with what seemed like loads of electrical 'patches' which were all wired up to afore-mentioned equipment. This meant that while lying there waiting for everything to begin, I could pass the time trying to relax and see how low I could make my heart rate go. Can't let that competitive thing go you see!
After that, injected with local anesthetic in both groins (ouch!!), as this was where 5 (I think) electrical catheter wires were going to be inserted and pushed up into my heart. You'll notice that I didn't mention General anesthetic -
you stay awake during all of this.Anyway, the Consultant (Dr Gall, nice chap) asked if I could feel my heart beating after inserting these wires. Conversation went
Me - "I think so"
Dr - "Well, your heart has gone into Atrial Flutter"
Me - "Isn't that an irregular heart beat? I've never had those symptoms before"
Dr - "True, but I guess you've never had 5 wires stuck in your heart before.."
Me - "Er, No..."
Dr - "We'll just leave it a few minutes and shock it back into rhythm if we need to..."
Yep, I was in my very own episode of Casualty. It's quite 'interesting' to be lying in an Operating theatre, completely still, and look up and see one of the heart monitors flashing 121, 100, 167, 130, 145, 80, 178, 167 like a random number generator.
As it turned out, it didn't go back to normal so they did shock it back, but apparently they temporarily put me 'under' for that. Very considerate!
Anyway, the rest of the time is like an Electrical MOT for the heart. They give you a drug (Isoprenalene (sp?)) to deliberately induce the errant heart rates I see during training, and do lots of complex measuring / testing, to trace electrical pathways to ultimately try and find the exact spot / tissue causing the problem. If they can identify it, they can remove it (burn/kill it) in a process called "ablation".
All of this confirmed that the type of SVT I have is called Atrial Tachycardia, and it was narrowed down to the left side of the heart. My ECG had shown an 'interesting' (i.e. not normal / easy) trace, which suggested that it may be difficult to undertake the ablation without a more complex / longer operation with highly sophisticated computer modeling software. This was exactly what Dr Gall had suspected in advance. Which unfortunately, meant no ablation or resolution yesterday.
All in all I was in the theatre for about 3 Hours, and spent all of the afternoon recovering in hospital, before they let me out at 5pm.
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So, what next?Well, to proceed, I'd have to return to hospital (proposed date 21st December - Merry Christmas...) for this more involved process. Unfortunately, because of what has been found so far, it means there would be more risk involved, since if the 'spot' that is causing the problem is close to the AV node (which conducts all the electric signals in the heart), ablation can result in possibility of having a Pacemaker fitted. Normally this is around 1 in 100 (as opposed to just 1 in 5000 of stroke risk), however, in my case it looks as though the risk is higher, possibly as high as 1 in 20. The exact risk wouldn't be known without the computer modeling stuff...
Which leaves a difficult decision - do I try and resolve this (and accept the risks), or just try and accept / deal with the current symptoms? Ultimately, the current situation is not 'risky' (in that I don't have any structural heart problems), but it is a big frustration when trying to train. It's a difficult one, especially after all that's happened so far this year.
Here, for your amusement, is a picture of me recovering not long after returing to the ward....looking like s*&t !!
